The fundamental thing you have to understand about our American news media is this: They are NOT in the business of giving or selling news to people. they ARE in the business of selling audiences to advertisers.
Their main objective is to increase their audience size, so they can charge more for advertising.
The next thing that is important to understanding our media is that many of them are failing miserably at increasing audience size. Probably one of the key reasons that big media is down on the economy is that if you work for network broadcast TV, or a large daily newspaper, economic times ARE tough.
Sensational headlines sell papers in the short term, but undermine credibility, and hurt circulation in the long term.
One of the things I'm enjoying about our times is the bloggers who make it a hobby to fact check big media, and call attention to blatant errors and biases. You might try
www.instapundit.com for frequent links to that kind of activity.